a light and cool costume of white, with bits of black velvet about it; and her white gloves and sunshade, and the white silver chain round her slender waist, were important features in the picture she presented.  How could this eager student of character get rid of the distressing trivialities?  All night long he had been dreaming of beautiful sentiments and conflicting emotions:  now his first thought was that he had never seen any costume so delightfully cool, and clear, and summer-like.  To look at her was to think of a mountain spring, icy cold even in the sunshine.

“I always come early,” said she, in the most matter-of-fact way.  “I cannot bear hurry in catching a train.”

Of course not.  How could any one associate rattling cabs, and excited porters, and frantic mobs with this serene creature, who seemed to have been wafted to Charing Cross on a cloud?  And if he had had his will, there would have been no special train to disturb her repose.  She would have embarked in a noble barge, and lain upon couches of swans-down, and ample awnings of silk would have sheltered her from the sun, while the beautiful craft floated away down the river, its crimson hangings here and there just touching the rippling waters.

“Ought we to take tickets?”

That was what she actually said; but what those eloquent, innocent eyes seemed to say was, “Can you read what we have to tell you?  Don’t you know what a simple and confiding soul appeals to you?—­clear as the daylight in its truth.  Cannot you look through us and see the trusting, tender soul within?”

“Perhaps we had better wait for Colonel Ross,” said he; and there was a little pronoun in this sentence that he would like to have repeated.  It was a friendly word.  It established a sort of secret companionship.  It is the proud privilege of a man to know all about railway tickets; but he rather preferred this association with her helpless innocence and ignorance.

“I had no idea you were coming to-day.  I rather like those surprise parties.  Mrs. Ross never thought of going until last evening, she says.  Oh, by the way, I saw you in the theatre last evening.”

He almost started.  He had quite forgotten that this self-possessed, clear-eyed, pale girl was the madcap coquette whose caprices and griefs had alternately fascinated and moved him on the previous evening.

“Oh indeed,” he stammered.  “It was a great pleasure to me—­and a surprise.  Lieutenant Ogilvie played a trick on me.  He did not tell me before we went that—­that you were to appear.”

She looked amused.

“You did not know, then, when we met at Mrs. Ross’s that I was engaged at the Piccadilly Theatre?”

“Not in the least,” he said, earnestly, as if he wished her distinctly to understand that he could not have imagined such a thing to be possible.

“You should have let me send you a box.  We have another piece in rehearsal.  Perhaps you will come to see that.”